The document summarizes a workshop on using Scopus, an abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature. Scopus covers over 24,600 journals, 5000+ publishers, and 1.4 billion cited references. It can be used to identify journals to read or submit to, track research trends, find collaborators, and monitor citations. The workshop demonstrates how to search Scopus, including using Boolean operators and proximity searches. It also shows how to analyze search results, build author profiles, and find additional help resources.

1. Scopus hands-on workshop
Michaela Kurschildgen, Customer Consultant Elsevier
15th July 2019

2. How do you…
Identify or analyse which journals to read or
submit your paper to?
Manage your career?
Decide what, where and with whom to collaborate?
Track research or monitor trends?
Find out what already exists in the global world
of research?
Find new ideas?

3. A brief introduction to Scopus &
its coverage

4. Scopus is one of the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature,
and features smart tools that allow you to track, analyze and visualize scholarly
research.
5000+
Publishers
Scopus delivers a comprehensive view on the world of research. No packages, no add-ons. One all-inclusive subscription.
24,600+
Serial titles
194,000+
Books
75
million
Items
16
million
Author profiles
~70,000
Affiliation
Profiles
1.4 billion cited references
dating back to 1970
Identify and analyze which
journals to read/submit to
Help researchers manage career-
citation counts and h-index
Decide what, where and with
whom to collaborate
Track impact of research;
monitor global research trends
Find out what already exists in
the global world of research
Determine how to differentiate
research topics, find ideas105
different countries

5. CONFERENCES
100K events
9.2M records
>10%
Special issue of
regular journal &
conference
proceedings.
Mainly Engineering
and Physical
Sciences
BOOKS
613 book series
- 38K Volumes
- 1.5M items
194 stand
alone books
monographs, edited
volumes, major
reference works
and graduate level
textbooks
Focus on Social
Sciences and
A&H
PATENTS
38M patents
from 5 major
patent offices:
• UK
• US
• Japan
• Europe
• World
JOURNALS
24.600 peer-reviewed journals
301 trade journals
• Full metadata, abstracts and
cited references back to
1970
• Funding data from
acknowledgements
• 3,784 Gold Open Access
titles
• Going back to 1788
Physical
Sciences
12,263
Health
Sciences
13,819
Social
Sciences
10,905
Life
Sciences
6,809
• Updated daily
• “Articles in Press” from > 8,000 titles
• 40 different languages covered
What content does Scopus include?

6. How does Scopus choose
content?

7. Coverage of high quality journals via selection by the
independent Content election & Advisory Board (CSAB)
The CSAB is an independent
board of subject experts from
all over the world.
Board members are chosen for
their expertise in specific
subject areas; many have
(journal) Editor experience.
https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works/content/scopus-content-selection-and-advisory-board

8. Transparent Scopus selection criteria for serial content
Peer-
review
English
abstracts
Regular
publication
Roman script
references
Pub. ethics
statement
https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content/content-policy-and-selection
All titles should meet all minimum criteria in order to be considered for Scopus review:

9. Is a title indexed in Scopus?
A reminder to check before you publish
Source: https://blog.scopus.com/posts/is-a-title-indexed-in-scopus-a-reminder-to-check-before-you-publish
To keep track of which titles have been discontinued from Scopus coverage,
check Scopus Discontinued Sources list (±300 titles total):

10. How to suggest a journal title to be added to Scopus
https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/content/content-policy-and-selection

11. Scopus Search Tips

12. Booleans*: And / Or / And Not
Order of precedence rules
Searches with multiple operators are processed in the following order:
1. OR
2. AND
3. AND NOT

13. Booleans: And / Or / And Not
connect your search words together to either narrow or broaden your set of results.
example: cloning AND humans
narrow your results, tell the database that ALL search terms
must be present in the resulting records
example: cloning OR reproduction
broaden your results, telling the database that ANY of your
search terms can be present in the resulting records
example: cloning NOT sheep
exclude words from your search
narrow your search, telling the database to ignore concepts
that may be implied by your search terms

14. Loose phrases vs. separate words
Use of double quotation
"heart attack“
where heart and attack are adjacent to each other.
If you do not specify anything between two words, Scopus automatically joins them with AND,
so the words in the phrase may not be searched together.
You can search using phrases to make your results more specific.
For example: "college students" AND "test anxiety". This way, the phrases show up in the results
as you expect them to be.

15. Exact phrase: {heart attack}
will find only an exact match for a word, phrase or character (including
stop words)
Exact phrase search

16. Wildcards: ? and *
? represents any single character
Example: Nure?berg
In any word or “loose phrase” you can use wildcards to help when you’re unsure of spelling, or
when a word has multiple spelling variations, or if you’re looking for chemicals.
* represents any number of characters, even zero
Example: comput*
returns computer, computers, computerize and computerization

17. Zika W/2 virus
finds articles in which “zika" and “virus" are no more than 2 terms
apart
Within operator: W/n
Use proximity operators to find words near one another
Example for W/n: Enter your search using the within operator, for
example: zika W/2 virus
This would look for ‘virus infection with zika,’ ‘Virus like zika,’ ‘virus,
zika,’ ‘zika virus,’ etc.

18. PRE/n
Use proximity operators to find words near one another
Example for Pre/n: You are searching for content related to zika virus. You could do a loose
phrase search (“zika virus”), which is a good start, but you might miss literature that talks about
‘zika and dengue virus.’
Instead, try to enter your search using: zika Pre/2 virus
This will find literature where ‘zika’ precedes ‘virus’ within 2 words, such as both “zika virus” and
“zika and dengue virus”
zika PRE/2 virus
finds articles in which “zika" precedes “virus" by two or fewer words.

19. Know what Scopus search does
automatically (apart from being case-insensitive)
Accented characters: work with or without the accent included
Example Dvořák and dvorak both return the same results
Lemmatization: means that singular and plural forms, and well as adjectives, will be
found if you type any of the variants.
Examples: attack and attacks; wide and wider
Equivalents: will find the equivalent terms/symbols
Example: behaviour and behavior

20. Build your search matrix and combine searches
back pain exercise
manipulative
therapy
compliance female
"back pain"
"Physical
fitness"
Chiropract* compliance female
LBP "fitness therap*" osteopath* woman
"low back pain"
"exercise
therap*"
"manual therap*"
"therapeutic
exercise*"
"spinal manipulation"
Example:
a) “back pain” or LBP or “low back pain”
b) “physical fitness” or “fitness therap*”or “exercise therap*”or “therapeutic exercise*”
c) Chiropract* or osteopath* or “manual therap*”or “spinal manipulation”
d) Compliance
e) Female or woman A and B and C and D and E
Result in Scopus: go here

21. Let’s go online
www.scopus.com

22. The Scopus help files are your friend
As you build your search, you can always refer to the ‘?’ button in the search form (or use the
‘Help’ button in the top navigation bar) to access helpful information on search syntax and access
tutorials.

23. Getting started with Scopus searches
TIP: login to Scopus to save search for documents / authors and set alerts

24. Sample Advanced Search
TIP: advanced search can give you more control over the searches. Use * as a
wildcard.

25. Citation Trends

27. Analyzing search results
Scopus provides an analysis of your
search results. The analysis shows you the
number of documents in your
search results broken down (on separate
tabs)

28. Author Profile

29. Author profile
Enter affiliation and
select subject area in
order to limit the number
of results

30. Check your Author profile View potential author matches
1
2

31. Using the Scopus Feedback wizard to make corrections

32. Analyze Author Output
1
2

33. ORCID link in the new Author Profile
Here you can link your publications with your ORCID profile

34. Affiliation Search

36. Affiliation search
Tip: Go to “Documents” to analyse content or filter results

37. Where to find further information

38. Where to find more information:
Blog.Scopus.com
Twitter.com/Scopus
Scopus info site:
www.elsevier.com/scopus
Newsletter

39. https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus
Learn & Support
Where to find further information

40. How to provide feedback and get in touch with us?

41. Scopus Webinars
Find more here

42. Scopus News & Updates
Please make sure you register to this monthly newsletter and
stay up-to-date with Scopus

43. Find more information on Search
https://blog.scopus.com/posts/6-simple-search-tips-lessons-learned-from-the-scopus-webinar
https://blog.scopus.com/webinars

44. Scopus
Let’s stay in touch
Facebook
facebook.com/elsevierscopus/
Twitter
@Scopus https://blog.scopus.com/Subscribe here